Lexington Keeler (a.k.a. Dead Keeler)
Admiral Lexington Keeler was an Admiral of the Christian Fleet and a Founder of Sapphire Colony. He is renowned for many victories in the Ninth Crusade and for dricing the last of the Dark Lords, Enoch, from the galaxy. His consciousness, as well as those of other prominent figures from the history of Sapphire Colony, were preserved through the use of Commonwealth Technology so that his “ghost” could be called upon for advice and counsel. (Sapphireans refer to these preserved consciousness as ‘The Dead Guys.’) He was also the namesake of Pathfinder Six . Commonwealth Era Biography Lexington Keeler was born in the Solar Year 3992 on Exeter colony in the Corona Borealis Sector of the Centaurus Quadrant. His family were farmers (Exeter was a largely agrarian world). Lexington had an ambition to go into space. He signed on with the crew of an unlicensed transport vessel called Alec Holland ''as a deckhand and left the planet. Through means that unclear, or at least, that no one wants to talk about, Lexington Keeler came into the possession of a large, well-armed starship called ''Red Jacket. Red Jacket ''became a notorious vessel working primarily in the Trinity, Monarch, and Shaolin systems of the Capricorn Sector, where the ship developed a reputation as a renegade. ''Red Jacket ''was captured by the Christian Fleet in the Solar Year 4002, impounded as an illegal vessel, and its crew charged with illegally running weapons to Trofeo colony. The Supreme Admiral of the Fleet, General Ziang, gave Keeler and his crew a choice, imprisonment in the Commonwealth penal colony at Ironsides, or putting his ship into service to the Christian Fleet as a scout and blockade runner. Keeler reluctantly accepted the deal. At this stage, all but three of the 13 Dark Lords had been defeated, but victory was by no means certain. The three remaining Dark Lords… Nebuchadnezzar, Lilith, and Enoch had absorbed much of the power of their defeated comrades, and were still ravaging worlds across the galaxy. ''Red Jacket ''distinguished itself in Battle Helping rout the Dark Fleets of the Dark Lord Nebuchadnezzar (The Metal Lord) at Demeter and Penrose colonies. Along with a very large Armada, ''Red Jacket ''was tasked to a massive force of ships honing in on Nebuchadnezzar’s Throne… a world in the Scorpio Sector he had transformed into a giant machine. He had merged with this machine, and with it, commanded vast fleets of giant war machines that had wiped out scores of colonies. While the warships battled, ''Red Jacket ''was able to slip past the front lines as it was unarmed and not considered a threat. Keeler crash-landed the ship at Nebuchadnezzar’s Palace, a portal to the control room where his physical body and machine mind were contained. Keeler and his crew fought their way inside, where Keeler battled the Dark Lord… who had taken residence in a giant robotic suit with machine-gun arms and flame-throwing breath, until finally managing to defeat him. For his bravery and success, Keeler was given command of the ''Ark Royal, ''the newest and largest capital ship in the Christian Fleet; which was good because ''Red Jacket ''was not salvageable after the crash. He was promoted to Admiral and given a Battle Group of 29 ships to lead. His BG was given the mission of combining with the forces of other fleets to seek out and destroy the last stronghold of the last of the Dark Lords that had been terrorizing the galaxy. Lilith had been defeated at her stronghold in the Beaulieu system. (Unfortunately, since Lilith extended complete mind control over her billions of subjects, and absent her control, unable to support themselves, they succumbed to starvation within days.) This left only Enoch, the most dangerous and powerful of the Dark Lords. Enoch had transformed himself into a great black cloud the size of a planet. Enoch was not like the other Dark Lords, who craved power, dominion over man, the adoration of billions of followers. Enoch craved only death; not his own, but the infliction of it on massive numbers of people. He claimed to control access to interdimensional Hell realms, from which he released horrendous creatures that spread death and destruction across any world he wrapped his cloud around. He had also the ability to make men hallucinate and go insane. Entire battle fleets had been destroyed by Enoch tricking the crews to fire upon each other. The Commonwealth crew aboard ''Ark Royal ''initially resented serving alongside the surviving crew of ''Red Jacket, ''whom the Admiral had made officers in his new command and whose company he preferred to keep. Keeler and Ziang’s fleets, accompanied by four others, confronted Lord Enoch in the Yokkaichi system. Enoch had devastated the colony, which was a scorched and burning ruin when the fleet arrived. The Fleet attempted to deploy weapons designed especially for use against noncorporeal entities that consisted of dark matter and existed interdimensionally. They carried self-contained devices capable of disrupting Enoch’s connection to the interdimensional realms from which drew his power. These devices would continue to function even if the ships that carried them were destroyed, and could not be turned off by the crews. The ships also carried anti-quantum weapons capable of destroying his essence. Enoch sent hordes of demonic furies against the ships of the fleet, made men hallucinate and turn against each other, sent demonic infiltrators into the crews, possessed sailors… every weapon at his disposable. Many, many ships were destroyed. Admiral Keeler was forced to murder his own first officer when Enoch possessed him. The battle raged for days. Most of the ships were destroyed. Enoch bled from a thousand wounds, none fatal on its own, but collectively they weakened him. Not enough, though. Every indication was that Enoch would outlast the fleet. General Ziang theorized that the gravitational field of the planet itself was helping Enoch maintain coherence, and suggested that it be destroyed. A few of his surviving destroyer ships fired planet blower uppers at the burnt out husk of Yokkaichi. The planet exploded. Enoch began shedding layers and layers of himself, like a collapsing star. Weakened and in agony, Enoch gathered what was left of his dark energy and fled the system. The survivors celebrated, thinking they had won. But Keeler realized that absent the disruptors, Enoch could reconstitute himself. Keeler pursued the Dark Lord out of the galaxy, piloting his flagship alone. Contact with the ship was lost some days later when it far exceeded the limits of its maximum velocity. Admiral Keeler would later say that he primed his stardrive engines to overload and detonate with the force of a supernova inside the dark cloud of Enoch. When his ship was inside, and with seconds to spare, he ejected from the ship in a transluminal speed lifepod, and was thrown clear when the engines detonated. Sapphire Era Biography A transluminal speed lifepod entered the orbit of the Telemachus colony in the Solar Year 4591. It was opened and found to contain Admiral Lexington Keeler, who had put himself in suspended animation after chasing Lord Enoch out of the galaxy some 300 years earlier. His return is met with a subdued level of celebration; most of the galaxy had sought to put the terror of the Ninth Crusade behind them. Feeling neglected, Lexington Keeler boarded the transport ship ''Sheffield, ''which was about to make a multi-decade colonial transport run to the new and relatively backwards Perseus Quadrant. In the Sapphirean Year 4653, Admiral Keeler arrived on Sapphire colony in the company of a group of artists, thinkers, and other types he had befriended while defrosted at ''Sheffield’s ''earlier stops. Eschewing the civilized parts of the planet, he established his colony on the southern shore of a large lake on the planet’s largest continent. Keeler took his party to a peninsula of land on the north shore of what was then called Freshwater Lake Alpha Australis. He renamed the body of water "Lake of the Loons," and founded a city which he called New Cleveland. He did not have a charter for the land, and colonial officials sought to expel him. But at the time, the site was so remote and colonial resources so limited, they had little choice but to leave him alone. The few enforcement teams who actually made it to New Cleveland never reported back; mainly because they discovered they kind of liked the place. Keeler’s actions earned him the enmity in the continental capital of Matthias and outright wrath among the colonial leaders in Corvallis; where the Governor, for a time, designated him a criminal fugitive and attempted to send Colonial Marshalls to arrest him. Lexington Keeler’s fierce defiance and rivalry with the Governor-General, Ellen Gloria Roaring, are the stuff of legend and doubtless contributed to the complete mental breakdown she suffered, spending her final years in an asylum. Within three decades of Keeler’s arrival, New Cleveland had become a thriving settlement; drawing thousands of new colonists to his site until it became the largest city on the planet. Three years after landing, he founded New Cleveland University (Now the University of Sapphire at New Cleveland) and founded the New Cleveland Permanent Arts Festival. Within a decade, New Cleveland had gained a reputation as "the Paris of the Outer Colonies." Visitors came from across the galaxy to visit its Arts Festival and numerous other facilities. Disgusted by the politics he witnesses throughout his life, Keeler had vowed to establish a system of Governance without politics. Building on the ideas of ancient philosophers that the way to keep governing systems from becoming ossified was to prevent individuals, families, and corporations from assuming permanent power was to randomly distribute power via the process by which political leadership was selected; i.e. if people were randomly selected for office and could serve only a limited period of time, they, their families, and their cronies would be unable to create a permanent political establishment. Furthermore, all laws should have provisions forcing them to sunset after a period of years, which brought constant refresh to the system of laws and government. In 4667, Keeler’s followers instituted a new government for South Alpha Continent, which was renamed Oz at his suggestion. Although these ideas were disdained at first, they proved so effective in developing New Cleveland and eventually the whole of Alpha Continent, they became the basis for the Sapphirean Constitution. Keeler’s mortal body began failing him in AS 4689. By the end of that year, his consciousness had been copied into Sapphire’s “Shadow Cabinet” where the preserved consciousnesses of great minds were preserved. His physical remains, per his instruction, were interred under a “big pile of rocks” 20 meters high. During his time on Sapphire, he married three women: Serena, Katarina, and Aurella. He fathered seven children with these women, and so began the Keeler family line which has endured and prospered on Sapphire for over 2,000 years. Pegasus Era Biography Lexington Keeler’s consciousness was downloaded from the Dead Guy matrix (whence he had been advising the Government of Sapphire for thousands of years) and transported secretly aboard the Pathfinder Ship ''Pegasus ''to act as an advisor to the ship’s Prime Commander, who happened to be a distant descendant. His presence on the ship was originally supposed to be a secret, but over time, it became widely known to the crew. Book 01: Meridian Lexington Keeler combined his consciousness with the consciousness of the entity known as Caliph and together defeated the Alien Regulators who had taken over the planet Meridian. Book 03: Bodicea Lexington Keeler advised Bill Keeler that the Aurelians were heirs to the same Evil he had fought during the Ninth Crusade and that they must be destroyed at any cost. Book 04: Winter Lexington Keeler traveled to the surface of Winter to meet and fight with his old frenemy, General Zhao. Book 06: Crucible Lexington Keeler advised Keeler to deal harshly with Goneril Lear’s mutiny and to take an offensive posture against the aliens that were attacking ''Pegasus. Book 07: Yronwode Lexington Keeler complimented Eliza Jane Change’s command of Pegasus ''in Keeler’s absence. Book 09: Gethsemane Lexington Keeler advised Keeler not to visit the Afterlife and mocked his choice of clothing. Book 12: Earth Lexington Keeler advised the crew of Pegasus to blow up the moon, and later to blow up the Earth, in order to stop ['SPOILER ALERT'''] the Dark Lord Enoch. Category:Characters Category:Major Characters